restrictions of any kind, placing each card in the exact final position he wishes it to occupy.

He will find he has made fifty-two movements as against 300, and that it has taken him a small fraction of the time.

The difference between these two methods is the difference between the present method of shunting and the proposed reform.

Can we do away with shunting? Great engineers say we can. Great economists say it will pay, and, as stated above, the machinery to accomplish this revolution exists. What is it that stops the way? Of this later.

The reader has had put before him the present state of affairs. He has been shown how it affects disastrously every individual interest, and it is now proposed to show the remedy.

It is proposed to take the reader step by step through the scheme of a Central Goods Clearing House for London; Central Goods Clearing Houses in all densely populated centres being the remedy. Let London therefore be taken as an example of what it is proposed to do in all densely populated centres throughout the world.

To understand this scheme, with regard to London, it will be necessary for the reader to imagine that the existing seventy-four goods stations and shunting yards have been eliminated. They no longer exist. Houses have been built upon some of them, some of them have been turned into large ornamental parks. As factors in railway working they are gone. The shunting engine, the personnel of the shunting yard, and 80 per cent. of the wagons, have likewise disappeared.

Now let it be remembered that every day 80,000 tons of goods, consisting of 3,000,000 packages, have

1 Sir William Preece, F.R.S., K.C.B. For twenty years Chief Engineer of H.M. Post Office.

to be received, recorded, sorted, and despatched. Some of this tonnage is both received and sent away by rail; other tonnage is both received and sent away by motor lorry; and some, again, is brought by rail and taken away by road, or vice versa. So we assume that no goods stations and yards are left in existence, and that there are 80,000 tons of goods waiting to be dealt with.

The whole of this tonnage will be dealt with by the proposed London Goods Clearing House.

First it will be noticed that at no place in this book is such a thing as a Railway Clearing House alluded to; the proposed building is a Goods Clearing House. The distinction is very important, as the proposed building would not only deal with railway traffic, nor only with the common road-carrier's traffic, but also with the traffic of the individual trader, or even the private householder. For instance, Mr. Selfridge would hand over his packages load by load, as soon as they were ready and duly labelled, to the Clearing House, where they would be sorted and despatched either to their destination in London, or anywhere else in the world. To the trader this method will be quicker, cheaper, and safer than any existing system, as will be shown.

It will now be necessary to describe the structure and approaches of the Clearing House.

The site chosen for the erection of this building is in Clerkenwell. (See map at end.) The ground covered will be thirty acres in all, or about seven times the size of the site of St. Paul's. (See silhouette at the beginning of this chapter.) The height of the building from sub-basement to roof will be 208 feet; that is to say, allowing for fifty feet below the street level, the walls of the building rise to the same height as the roof of Westminster Abbey, viz., 158 feet. The water towers of the Clearing House, of which there will be fourteen, will be the same height as the towers of Westminster

First, that only 5,000 motor lorries will be required to do the estimated road traffic of the Clearing House.1 These 5,000 motor lorries will supplant the present 100,000 vehicles doing the work of collection and delivery in London. The enormous diminution in

1 Mr. Edgar Harper's Report.

Abbey. To put an end to the objection raised that the approaches to the Clearing House would be congested by the converging traffic, two things must be pointed out.

street congestion which would result is obvious. These wagons will depart from the Clearing House at all hours, and will likewise return at all hours. According to Clearing House methods, the time spent by these vans at the Clearing House while unloading and reloading will not be more than five minutes per visit. Thus it will be seen that congestion is an arithmetical impossibility.1

As to the approaches to the Clearing House, there are sixty gates to the Clearing House yard which surrounds the building, and the twenty-six existing streets converging upon them have an aggregate width of 850 feet.

Having shown how the Clearing House is approached by road, it will now be necessary to show how it is approached by rail.

The first essential of the approach by rail is this: the Clearing House must, by these rail-approaches, be linked up with every railway system in Great Britain. This, strange to say, is much easier to do than would at first appear.

The selection of the right strategic position for the Clearing House facilitates this. It must be remembered that when railways were first instituted they were not permitted to enter London. Consequently their termini were placed in a ring round London, viz., King's Cross, St. Pancras, Euston, Paddington, Nine Elms, Bricklayer's Arms, etc.

It may be here mentioned that Bricklayer's Arms, Nine Elms, and others were originally passenger stations, and were subsequently used as goods stations without any attempt at conversion being made for that purpose. They are totally unsuited for goods

stations.

The electric locomotive now enables us to bring

1 Lord Claud Hamilton, in a letter to a shareholder of the New Transport Company, put forward this objection, but declined to give details when asked to do so.

railway trains into the heart of London by means of tubes, without causing any inconvenience whatever.

This has also made the Clearing House possible. There is no difficulty in bringing full-sized goods trains through tubes. The tubes only need to be made large enough, viz., sixteen and a half feet internal diameter.

It must be pointed out that steam locomotives could not pass through these tubes under any circumstances whatever, because of the poisonous carbonic oxide they throw off, which would poison the engine-driver, the stoker, and the guard.

The Clearing House would consequently be served by a fleet of its own electric locomotives, specially designed to do this particular work.

Referring to the map, the reader will see that the railway approaches to the Clearing House consist of three sets of tubes, which on approaching the Clearing House spread out into twenty-six tracks. Twentyfour of these tracks pass between the walls of the Clearing House. The other two tracks will pass on either side outside the walls. These two latter tracks are for passenger trains, and will provide for the arrival and departure of the army of workmen employed at the Clearing House, or such of them as this method of arrival and departure may be a convenience to. Each of these two tracks is provided with a wide platform. The platform is on the outside, the train against the outer wall of the Clearing House. The lifts to the different levels, with the exception of the crypt, will start from this platform, and carry the workmen to the particular floors where their work lies. On the outer edge of the platforms will be the two vast garages, on the same level as the railway lines; that is to say, immediately above the crypt level, and immediately below the street level.

Ingress to and egress from this garage is afforded by the lifts, which not only carry the workmen, but also